High School

O to have come home
from basketball practice
and seen my father dancing
to ghostly Big Band Music.

Head down, arms up,
muttering Live! Live! as I
carried my gym bag past him
and put away the gun

The Coachman

I'd love to hear a horse clop by
my window late at night.
A carriage in the darkness
would be a wonder-sight!

And though we couldn’t see him,
we’d hear the coachman roar:
“Awake your hearts, your minds, your souls!—
We pass this way no more.”

February 25, 2025

About the writer

After a rather extended and varied second childhood in New Orleans (street musician, psych-tech, riverboat something-or-other, door-to-door poetry peddler, etc.), Matt Dennison finished his undergraduate degree at Mississippi State University where he won the National Sigma Tau Delta essay competition (judged by X.J. Kennedy). His work has appeared in Verse Daily, Rattle, The Inflectioniest Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and Cider Press Review, among others. He is the author of Kind Surgery, from Urtica Press (Fr.) and Waiting for Better, from Main Street Rag Press. He has also made short films with Michael Dickes, Swoon, Marie Craven and Jutta Pryor.